The enemy was everywhere: London and the counties seemed to be awash with priests sent from the seminaries and colleges of Rome, Rheims, and Douai. Their aim? Sedition, insurrection, and the perversion of men’s souls. The common or garden priests were a poor lot. It was the Jesuits, disciplined and determined though few in number, who threatened the stability of the realm: the Devil’s army of the Counter-Reformation.
There is another matter, John, Walsingham continued, his voice quiet, as if the walls would hear him. The matter of Sir Francis Drake.
What of him?
Walsingham sipped sweet Rhenish from his small silver cup. His face was half in shadow in this weak wintry light. There was a fire in the hearth, a single small log glowing without enthusiasm; it did little to dispel the chill. He rose and fetched a paper from a pile near one of the tables, and handed it to Shakespeare, who saw instantly that it was encrypted in a Spanish code.
Berden waylaid that in Paris. It was on its way from Mendoza to the Spanish King.
Shakespeare was aware that any communication between Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador to Paris, and King Philip was of extreme importance. No one had done more to undermine Elizabeth and the English state than Don Bernardino de Mendoza; he had been expelled from England three years earlier for his endless conspiracies, and even as he left under armed guard, he turned to one of the Council and taunted him that he would return as a conqueror. As for Berden, Shakespeare knew of him as one of Walsingham’s top intelligencers in the field. There would be no reason to doubt the authenticity of this intercept.
I assume you have had it deciphered?
It is a subject close to your own heart, John. Phelippes has broken the code and finds this message: ‘The dragon slayer has been dispatched to England.’ It goes on to ask for funds of seventy thousand ducats to be made available in the event of a successful outcome. This note is a warrant for murder, John. It tells us an assassin has been sent to England to kill Drake. We have no way of knowing when he was sent, how long he has been here, or how far his plans are advanced. But there is no question as to the import of the message and the seriousness of the position.
Shakespeare nodded assent. He knew that Thomas Phelippes, Walsingham’s cipher expert, would not have made an error in discovering the meaning of such a paper. It was his breaking of the Queen of Scots’s intricate code that had convicted her of treason. And now, if this encoded message was to be believed, a killer had been contracted to murder Sir Francis Drake. All Spaniards feared Drake and called him El Draque, meaning Dragon. His title was Vice Admiral of England and yet his repute far exceeded mere titles. In a country of superb mariners- Walter Raleigh, Martin Frobisher, Thomas Cavendish, Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Grenville, John Hawkins, and Howard of Effingham-Drake was peerless. And he was driven by hatred of the Spanish. It was a loathing born of the cruelties meted out to his friends and comrades-at-arms long ago, in 1568, when they were taken by the Inquisition at the debacle of San Juan d’Ulua in the New World. The names of those men still gnawed at Drake’s soul, and he thought of them often: fellow Devonian Robert Barrett, burned to death in the auto-dafe at Seville; William Orlando, dead in the same town while festering in a dungeon; Michael Morgan, tortured, whipped almost to death, then put to the oars as a galley slave; George Ribley of Gravesend, garroted and his body burned at the stake. This was what infused Drake with feral courage and kept hot his bitter enmity for the Spaniard. It was a hatred that was fueled by every Spanish outrage that occurred: the 1572 massacre of men, women, and children in the Dutch town of Naarden; the slaughter, rape, and sacking of Antwerp. These events seared themselves into Drake’s memory and kept his rage burning like molten iron. His enmity was returned in kind by King Philip II, who had long since decided Drake must die.
All in England knew that no single man was more important than Drake to the survival of the realm. If anything could prevent an invasion by the rumored armada, it was the fighting skills and strategic brilliance of the Vice Admiral. During twenty years at sea, he had proved his courage and seacraft time and again, capturing scores of Spanish galleons and storming ports with irresistible ferocity.
No one was in any doubt that Spain’s invasion fleet must be beaten at sea-for if it disgorged its battle- hardened troops on English soil, all would be lost.
England’s land forces were woefully ill-prepared. They would be swept aside and slaughtered within days. And then the terror would begin: the dread Inquisition.
Soon, villages, towns, and cities would be ablaze with the burning bodies of tens of thousands of Protestant heretics. No one would be safe from torture and execution.
Shakespeare shuddered at the prospect. He knew what was at stake from his own experience.
As a junior intelligencer in Walsingham’s service five years earlier, he had helped break another Spanish plot against Drake. The money on offer to kill him then was twenty thousand ducats. Shakespeare had worked to identify the conspirators. It was a simple and amateurish plot: Pedro de Zubiaur, the Spanish agent in London, had recruited a merchant named Patrick Mason to persuade an old enemy of Drake’s to kill him. This enemy was named John Doughty, the vengeful half-brother of Thomas Doughty, who had been executed before his very eyes by Drake on his round-world voyage. A little judicial torture and Mason had named names. As far as Shakespeare knew, Doughty was still rotting in the Marshalsea prison.
And now King Philip was raising the stakes. Seventy thousand ducats would tempt desperate men.
Walsingham continued: Philip plods with feet of lead across the world’s great stage. It is easy to make merry at his expense when he complains like a girl child about Drake and Hawkins and the rest plundering his treasure. But though he plods, he does have weight behind him, thanks to his riches from the New World. And he can crush. I would say that, at sea, my good friend Drake is more likely to die of scurvy than fall to the sword or pistol of a hired killer, but now that he is on land, fitting and supplying the fleets in the reaches of the Thames, he is an easy target. In the shipyards by day he is vulnerable, John, and at court by night he can scarcely be safer. He’s in danger, just when we need him most. Santa Cruz, King Philip’s admiral, is like to sail with his fleet this spring or summer. My spies tell me he conspires to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s armies in the lowlands and carry and protect them as they cross the sea to England. With Drake out of the way, their passage would be a thousand times easier.
Shakespeare hesitated. Everything he knew of Drake by repute suggested he would not need anyone’s help to survive. He had been fighting and defeating Spanish fleets for nigh on twenty years now. Surely Drake can look after himself, he said at last.
Can he, John? At sea, yes, of course. But on land, in the teeming shipyards, full of foreigners of every hue and creed? Who will spot one man with an arquebus or crossbow among the hundreds at work? Drake needs protection-and you will provide it.
Shakespeare ran a finger around his ruff He felt hot, despite the lack of warmth in this cheerless room. And Lady Blanche Howard?
And Lady Blanche. And all your other duties. We are all stretched like bowstrings. That is the way it is. Anyway, it seems to me you have the perfect servant to assign to Drake-your former sailor, Mr. Boltfoot Cooper. I believe he already knows Sir Francis rather well.
Shakespeare almost laughed. There was nothing to be gained from arguing. Walsingham must know that Boltfoot had parted on bad terms with Drake, having protested that he had been cheated of his fair share of the colossal plunder taken aboard the Golden Hind from the Spanish treasure ship Cacafuego. He had also said that after three years at sea in Drake’s company he would never board a ship again and certainly not one of Drake’s. No, Boltfoot would not be happy to be in the Dragon’s company once more.
Chapter 4
Night had come and gone when Rose Downie was startled awake. Topcliffe was standing over her, prodding at her with his blackthorn. She scrabbled to her feet, heart pounding. Her hands were stiff with cold, clutching the baby. The child chose that moment to wail; its piercing, monotonous cry, like the howl of a cat, sent shivers down her spine, but Topcliffe merely smiled.
Is it baptized in our church? he asked, and touched its strange face, with its curious, un-human eyes.
Rose Downie felt fear in her heart but she needed this man. Her friend had told her that he knew everything about everyone in the city, that he would help her as he had helped others, but that he would demand much in return. My own baby was baptized, sir, by the Bishop of London himself, but this is not my baby.
